While storing notes about people or companies in the Address book on the Mac (or in Contacts on the iPhone) makes perfect sense, some information just doesn't belong there.

For example, I am taking a Frontier Airline flight to Macworld later this week. I received a confirmation email from Frontier after I booked my flight:

While I might put the telephone number and URL for Frontier in Address Book, information about my flight to San Francisco would be easier to locate in iCal or the iPhone Calendar. I used copy and paste to put the information into iCal:

Then I waited for MobileMe to sync the information to my iPhone:

One of the most interesting things is that although the links from the email do not appear in the iCal event, they are visible and available on my iPhone. The links open to Google maps in Safari. Just think of how convenient it could be to have such easy access for maps to hotels, restaurants etc.

Note that I edited the screenshots to remove personal and identifying information from the images above.

Both Bob LeVitus and I will be at Macworld later this week. Look for blog posts, Twitters and updates as we learn about new products for the Mac, iPhone and iPod Touch. I will be traveling with my husband, Ron--if we don’t get snowed in by yet another DC storm.

--Pat

TagsICal, iPhone, Internet

An update to the Macintosh operating system sometimes leads to complaints. That was certainly the case in iCal in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. Suddenly it became much more difficult to edit events. There had been a "drawer" at the side of the calendar in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger that made it easy to quickly edit events.

In Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, the drawer was replaced by a pop-up. This pop-up remains in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard



While it is useful for adding the event, making changes with it is inconvenient, especially if you are making multiple ones. To make changes with it, you must double-click on the event in the calendar, then click the edit button. If you wan to change another event, you must repeat this action:



Apple must have heard the complaints because they have added a new Edit menu item, Show Inspector, in Snow Leopard:



The iCal Inspector does not have an edit button. You can make changes by simply clicking on an item. If you need to make changes in another event, just click on the event and continue editing.



There are lots of new, hidden features in Snow Leopard. Check back soon for more tips.

-- Pat

TagsSnow Leopard, ICal